Cruise Ships = Pirate Bait

Share

Cruise Ships = Pirate Bait

Two weeks ago, an Australian cruise ship passing through the Gulf of Aden found itself surrounded by more as much as thirty small boats. They wereSomali pirates, according to initial reports, operating in the biggest coordinated group seen so far. The *MV Athena *opened up her throttles and escaped unharmed. Soon after the ship made port, however, the story began to change. There weren’t any pirates, a company official claimed, just tuna fishermen.

But pirates and Somali tuna fishermen are one and the same, according toCaptain Edward Kalendaro, skipper of a Kenya-based coastal freighter dedicated to the dangerous Mogadishu humanitarian run. Kalendero says that these days many Somali fishermen carry weapons on their boats so that, when they spot an unprotected cargo or passenger ship, they can drop their fishing lines, pick up their RPGs and catch a prize far more lucrative than any tuna.

So it’s possible that the *Athena *really was targeted by a pirate swarm. If so, the incident reflects a worrying trend.

Cruise ships have been frequent targets of pirates in recent years. In one famous 2005 incident, the crew of one passenger ship used a sonic weapon to ward off an attempted at-sea hijacking. There’s little doubt pirates have their sights set on seizing a ship full of tourists. With potentially thousands of hostages, the kidnappers could demand an enormous ransom, far greater than the $1 million they might get for a container ship.

What’s unclear is how pirates would manage to control a giant cruise ship with hundreds and hundreds of passengers and crew aboard.

In most cases, pirate bands maintain a one-to-one ration of captives to captors. And if a hostage situation lasts more than a few days, the pirates often bring in reinforcements and guard their captives in shifts.Kalendero’s ship, Semlow, was seized three years ago, before he took command, and in that case there were twice as many pirates as captured crew. Assuming the tuna fishermen that surrounded the Athenaactually were pirates, and that each tuna boat had 10 people aboard, there probably were no more than 300 pirates involved in that attempted hijacking. And even that sounds like a major stretch. Even so, they'd still be at a 3-to-1 disadvantage versus the Athena's 900 passengers and crew.

According to Captain Frederick Wahutu, a ship’s agent in Mombasa, Kenya, a desperate pirate is a dangerous pirate. And what could be more desperate than kidnappers finding themselves with many times more many captives as they’re used to? So far this year pirates have not killed any ship’s crew or passengers. But that could change.

Cruise lines are aware of the danger. While cruise ships generally are fast enough to outrun pirates, and boast a wider range of expensive nonlethal weaponry than most cargo ships, the potential consequences of a successful pirate attack are far, far more grave than for other kinds of ships. So while many commercial shippers have adapted to piracy by slightly altering routes or readjusting their business plans to accommodate higher insurance premiums, the cruise industry is considering abandoning East Africa entirely.

The biggest victim in that case would be Kenya, according to KhalidShapi, who runs a tour company in Mombasa that partners with cruise lines. On Saturday, Shapi stood pierside with the Costa Europa, a1,300-passenger liner out of Italy. The tourists streaming from CostaEuropa’s sleek white flank represented hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for a city where many workers make just a few dollars a day. “A solution has to be found almost immediately if cruises in the Indian Ocean are going to continue,” Shapi said.

But none of the potential solutions – more warship patrols, even attacks on pirates’ land bases – are cheap, easy or lasting. The only permanent solution to piracy must play out in Somalia, in the political realm. And that could take years, or even decades.